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Building Autos With the Same DNA

DETROIT, Feb. 21 - Is the 9-7X the first sport utility vehicle from Saab, or is it a Chevy TrailBlazer dressed up to look Swedish?

The 9-7X, which is to come out this spring, will be roughly the same size and shape as a TrailBlazer, and for that matter, a GMC Envoy, Buick Rainier and Isuzu Ascender. It will roll off the same production line as the TrailBlazer, Envoy, Rainier and Ascender at a General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio. All five S.U.V.'s share a pickup truck frame, the same engines, a similar sheet-metal design and many of the same parts, but the Saab has a base price of $38,270, about $11,000 higher than the TrailBlazer.

As the auto industry has increasingly consolidated, companies are using more of the same manufacturing components for a wide range of vehicles from different brands.

And while that kind of strategy is hardly new, it has become riskier in recent years as companies like G.M. (which fully acquired Saab in 2000), Ford and DaimlerChrysler acquire or form alliances with European and Asian manufacturers. That creates challenges in maintaining the identity of a distinctive Swedish carmaker like Saab, whose vehicles increasingly are being jointly developed with American and Japanese brands.

In its lowest-common-denominator form, such a strategy is disparagingly referred to in the industry as "badge engineering." From this viewpoint, it is only a little better than having a worker reach into a box at the end of a production line and randomly dole out brand emblems, or badges, to the same vehicle.

"Some companies in our industry thought they could take an existing product, change the appearance slightly, put a different badge on it and create a new brand," said Helmut Panke, BMW's chief executive, in a speech last year. "Consumers weren't fooled."

But enormous costs can be saved, and a wider variety of cars can be produced, by developing many vehicles with a single architecture -- an industry term for a manufacturing framework for similar vehicles made with many of the same parts and able to be built on the same production line.

While the strategy has risks, it can be carried out with varying artfulness, depending on how much effort and money a company wants to spend. Nissan's two large sport utility vehicles, the Armada and the Infiniti QX56, both have a humpback roof and look as if they were separated at birth. By contrast, Toyota's Highlander and Lexus RX330 are S.U.V.'s of similar size but have different shapes.

James J. Padilla, the Ford Motor Company's president, said in a recent conference call with financial analysts that the efficient use of a single architecture to develop Ford vehicles in Europe as well as Mazdas and Volvos, makers controlled by Ford, had been "a major contributor" to the European operations' return to profitability last year.

Those vehicles -- including the European version of the Ford Focus, the Volvo S40 sedan and the Mazda 3 sedan and wagon -- seem distinctive enough to the layman. By contrast, Ford is frequently criticized for making Ford, Mercury and Lincoln cars and S.U.V.'s that are easy to confuse at a distance.

In some ways, the 9-7X will be notably Saab-like. G.M. spent about $50 a vehicle to move the ignition switch to the console between the front seats, an idiosyncrasy that has been a Saab design feature for decades. It also remade the front grille and interior, lowered the frame an inch closer to the ground and altered the computer-controlled handling characteristics to make the 9-7X feel more carlike.

Robert A. Lutz, General Motors' vice chairman and product development chief, said in a recent interview: "Unless the press once again writes, 'Hey, everybody, don't be stupid, this is just a TrailBlazer underneath, do not buy this thing'; if they evaluate the design exterior and interior, and evaluate the ride and handling fairly, without bias, I think the vehicle can do very well for Saab."

But Csaba Csere, an engineer and the editor of Car and Driver magazine, called the new Saab "awfully risky."

"When you do a Saab 9-7X," he said, " where you basically take the TrailBlazer and hang a few Saab cues on it, which is basically what they've done, I think they're taking an enormous risk.

"Saab has been a very distinctive brand and one could argue that, over its history and life, there was nothing like a Saab," Mr. Csere said, noting that it was an innovator of front-wheel drive, turbocharged engines and aerodynamic design.

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"To the longtime Saab buyer," he said, "that was one of the key attractions of Saab: 'I'm different. I'm not a conformist."'

Peter M. DeLorenzo, a consultant who publishes Autoextremist.com, a Web site that often criticizes G.M.'s strategy, was more positive.

"Given what they're working with, I thought they did a surprisingly good job," he said, adding that "when G.M. took over Saab, the Saab purists were naturally incensed, but if Saab is going to survive as a worldwide brand they need more than Saab purists."

G.M., which has been struggling to maintain modest profit levels, does not disclose financial information on individual brands, but Saab sales were down 20 percent last year and analysts say that the brand has been a consistent money loser. The antidote, in the company's view, is to fill Saab dealerships with more products developed in ways as cost-effective as possible.

Thus, the Saab 9-3 sedan was developed on the same architecture as the Pontiac G6 and Chevrolet Malibu. Mr. Csere and others have said that these cars were successfully distinct.

"I don't think anyone would call that badge engineering," he said.

But last year, G.M. was criticized for the Saab 9-2X, a wagon based on, and closely resembling in shape, Subaru's WRX wagon. Subaru, a division of Fuji Heavy Industries of Japan, is a partner of G.M.

"It's tricky in that the press is very attuned and watching for signs of badge engineering," Mr. Lutz said.

"The 9-2 is of course derived from a Subaru," he added. "The nation's media were very quick to point that out and say you're not really getting a Saab, you're getting a fake Saab.

"In fact, I think the Swedish engineers and designers worked very hard with the Fuji people to make it into something that is very close to a real Saab."

Is the 9-7X close to a real Saab? Mr. Lutz said he had been more concerned about making the Saab S.U.V. stand out than he was in differentiating G.M.'s domestic-brand S.U.V.'s from each other.

"The TrailBlazer and Envoy are not hugely different except in interior and exterior character, and that seems to be enough," he said.

"It's when you get to doing an iconic brand like Saab that you'd better make sure it looks and feels radically different," Mr. Lutz added. "It's got to be slick, silky, quiet, high performance and have phenomenally good ride and handling."

Mr. DeLorenzo said the industry's recipe for success should be to make all its brands as distinct as possible. "You have to extend that character below the skin as much as you can." .

"Badge engineering in its early definition was always bad," Mr. DeLorenzo added. "In the new global market, it's essential, but there are good ways and better ways to do it, and the companies who do it better will ultimately prevail."